When my father was sixteen, he leased an acre of Forest Service land in Montana and built a cabin. In those days you could do such things. A small bookshelf behind the couch was crammed with novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Zane Grey, James B. Hendryx, and a stack of comic books; I read each one every summer. My mother once tried to distract me with Bible stories, but surrendered when I asked when Abraham changed his last name to Lincoln.

My first book was a collaborative eleven-page, illustrated history of dinosaurs that foundered on gems such as: “The Stegosaurus had a brain the size of a pea, which notes him quite stupid.” My first novel, a five-hundred-page SciFi/Fantasy bildungsroman, was just as good.

College lit classes all but killed my enthusiasm for great literature—but not for great stories. After six years in Africa and a slog through architecture school, my wife and I moved to New Mexico, where my passion for literature was rekindled. After twenty-five years in architecture, I now devote my time to writing, reading, and the pursuit of the perfect sentence. I still wonder what happened to the books from that cabin.